National News Stories from NBC

The decimated city of Moore, Okla., will hold a public memorial service Sunday evening, six days after a tornado killed 24 people, injured 377 and destroyed hundreds of homes. Gov. Mary Fallin said the prayer service at the First Baptist Church will be "o…

Batten down the hatches. Forecasters said Wednesday that the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season is likely to be "above normal and possibly extremely active," predicting three to six major hurricanes this season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra…

Tamerlan Tsarnaev landed on America's terrorist watch list in 2011. Tamerlan's younger brother, Dzhokhar, now charged in the Boston Marathon bombing case, seems not to have made the list. Ultimately, Tamerlan's inclusion on the watch list did not lead inv…

As 1,400 Boy Scouts of America delegates gathered Thursday to vote on a proposal to end the organization’s longstanding ban on gay youth, activists on both sides of the contentious issue ramped up the pressure. A group opposed to allowing gay Scouts…

Now that the U.S. government has publicly acknowledged that it launched a drone strike that killed U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen two years ago, a federal judge has asked the Justice Department to explain what effect the admission will have on a la…

Pat Hall had one request for volunteers scouring the rubble of her ripped apart home in a rural corner of Oklahoma City: find the necklace that her son, who died quickly from cancer, gave her before his death. She got her wish. Brian Foster, an Air Force …

Cleveland’s most camera-ready hero may now also be its best fed. More than a dozen Ohio restaurants and at least one in Pennsylvania have pledged free burgers for life to Charles Ramsey, the Big Mac-munching man who was credited with helping a woman…

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is under fire for his decision to block the execution of man convicted of massacring four people at a Chuck E. Cheese in Aurora, Colo., two decades ago. The Democrat has vowed not to sign a death warrant for Nathan Dunlap a…

Authorities recovered the body of a Minnesota child who went missing after a gravel slide swept several members of an elementary school class on a school fossil-hunting trip into a pit, bringing the death toll in the incident to two. Crews recovered the b…

New census estimates show that most of the nation's largest cities further enhanced their allure last year, posting strong population growth for a second straight year.  Big cities surpassed the rate of growth of their surrounding suburbs at an even …

A Texas deputy who was shot by a wanted Colorado man says he only remembers bits of what can be seen in video from his dashboard camera. Evan Spencer Ebel, who was suspected in the slaying of Colorado's prisons chief and a pizza deliveryman, shot Montague…

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — A little treasure in the debris of a home that once welcomed Rebecca Garland's four grandchildren gave her such a delight as her friends and family scoured the mountain of rubble for any mementos left behind by Monday's powerf…

A  nine-year-old girl killed by the Oklahoma tornado was mourned at a memorial service Thursday, with her family taking comfort in the belief that she was with her best friend when she died. Antonia Candelaria is one of seven children who perished at…

Thunderstorms -- bringing large hail and the chance of "a tornado or two" -- were expected to hit central and southwestern Oklahoma and parts of Texas Thursday as bad weather continued to hit the Plains. The National Weather Service published a map showin…

After years of emotional debate, the Boy Scouts of America are considering a proposal at their annual meeting to allow gay youths to participate openly in the popular organization for the first time. The exclusion of gay Scouts has been the subj…